Hybrid Solar Dryer with Biomass Integration

A mixed mode hybrid solar dryer with biomass integration has been designed,
constructed and evaluated. The usage of solar heating for drying application is suffering
from non-continuous availability of the solar radiation especially during the cloudy days
and at night. This project is aiming to carry out experimental investigation of a solar
dryer performance using solar as main input and biomass burner as auxiliary source of
energy to compensate the solar radiation. Several design criteria has been applied to the
hybrid solar dryer and the biomass burner so that it can be used to dry for various types
of materials. The major components of the fabricated dryer in this work are biomass
burner (with a combination of 2 fixtures), solar collector and drying chamber (with a
conventional solar chimney). The dryer was fabricated using simple materials, tools and
skills, and was tested in three modes of operation (solar drying moae, biomass drying
mode and combiner drying mode) by drying 200g of empty fruit bunch (EFB) on each of
the 5 trays. Results show that the combination of hybrid solar with biomass dryer is the
most effective way for drying process. The moisture content reduction is nearly 50%
within 2 hours. Thus, the objectives the project to validate the used of biomass backup
heater has been achieved. Further improvements to the system design are suggested.